Texas Governor Rick Perry revealed his support for examining the state’s role in potentially storing high-level waste in a letter he sent to Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst and Texas Speaker of the House Joe Straus late last week. In his Interim Committee Charges, Straus asked Texas’ Committee on Environmental Regulation to consider the logistics and economic impact of potentially hosting a high-level radioactive waste disposal site or interim storage facility. “2048, or whatever year Washington forecasts that a solution will be provided, is too long to wait,” Perry wrote. “I believe it is time for Texas to act, particularly since New Mexico is seeking to be federally designated for HLW disposal. The New Mexico proposed site is approximately 50 miles from the Texas border, and we must ensure our citizens are protected. We have no choice but to begin looking for a safe and secure solution for HLW in Texas – a solution that would allow the citizens of Texas to recoup some of the more than $700 million they have paid toward addressing this issue,” he said.
Perry also attached with his letter a report he commissioned from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, highlighting the history of spent fuel storage programs as well as important advice to heed if Texas were to move forward. “Any federal or private program to manage SNF (disposal, storage, or reprocessing) needs to be established in a manner that reduces the uncertainty due to changing prevailing political opinions and minimizes local and state opposition through stakeholder meetings, finding volunteer communities, financial incentives, and a process that is considered fair and technically rigorous,” the TCEQ report said. “Otherwise, the effort to license and build these facilities may result in nothing but wasted time and wasted money like the Yucca Mountain repository, the PFS storage facility, or the MRS facility.” The report also mentioned the Waste Isolation Project Plant in New Mexico and Waste Control Specialists’ low-level radioactive waste disposal facility as examples to be built upon for a potential SNF site.